The Drawings and Paintings of Daphne Odjig: A Retrospective Exhibition

October 4, 2008 to January 4, 2009
Daphne Odjig’s artistic career is rooted in her personal history and experiences as a self-taught First Nations artist and woman. Of mixed English and Potawatomi descent, Odjig grew up in the village of Wikwemikong on Manitoulin Island, where she experienced the culture of her ancestors. Her grandfather, Jonas Odjig, was a great influence in her life, teaching her Potawatomi traditions, customs and legends, and the rich pictorial styles of the art of the Anishnabec.

The first retrospective in over two decades, The Drawings and Paintings ofDaphne Odjig: A Retrospective Exhibition, features over forty years of Daphne Odjig’s artistic career. Organized by the Art Gallery of Sudbury and the National Gallery of Canada in collaboration with guest curator, Bonnie Devine, the exhibition is an examination of the philosophical, aesthetic, and cultural viewpoint of the Woodland painter through the works of Daphne Odjig.

Opening at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection on October 4, 2008 the exhibition features over fifty works, including examples of Odjig’s history paintings, murals, legend paintings, erotica, abstractions, and landscapes. Together these pieces communicate the breadth of Odjig’s engagement with her personal, political and cultural history. The exhibition also traces Odjig’s remarkable aesthetic development from her initial experimental pieces to her more mature works of the 1980s and 1990s.